During the weekend of July 23, Leystone Farms owners Karri and Trefor Munn-Venn hosted a women in agriculture networking event with special guest speaker Katelyn Duban, host of “The Rural Woman Podcast.”

Soon after Karri moved her family to their new farm in Luskville, her friend who worked with her in climate policy introduced her to Katelyn Duban’s podcast. The podcast features conversations with women in agriculture from all types of backgrounds. The women are invited to . . .

share their stories in the hopes of creating community and lessening the loneliness that often accompanies the profession of farming. The podcast soon became one of Karri’s favourites leading her to nominate herself to be a guest and was finally invited to be on the podcast in December. The episode she was featured on was titled “Starting a Farm in 2020.” Since then, Karri has become a Patreon executive producer of Duban’s podcast.

“I love what she’s doing. I think the conversations that she is having in sharing the stories of women in agriculture are really important,” said Karri.

Duban began her podcasting journey a short time after she moved in with her husband on his family farm in Lethbridge, Alberta. For a while Duban was not interested in farming, and she continued working in the city and commuting back and forth. She explained that it wasn’t until she experienced what she called a “mental breakdown, spiritual awakening” and took time off work, to look around to see what was really happening on the farm. Duban recounted her transition to farming by saying that one Sunday she went out to swath winter wheat with her husband; he stepped out of the tractor and gave her the instructions saying “don’t hit anything.”

“Luckily I didn’t hit anything. I was in that swather for about ten hours that day going back and forth back and forth and that was the moment I knew I was going to quit my job to become a farmer. Because at the end of that day when I’m standing over the deck looking out at that field I knew that this was the job for me, I could tangibly see what I was doing and I knew that that food was going to feed somebody, and that was a feeling that I never wanted to end,” said Duban.

Duban began “The Rural Woman Podcast” because she noticed a lack of story based podcasts. “I tried to find a story based podcast specifically about women in agriculture, and at the time there really wasn’t a lot happening that focused on our stories. And I blame it on heat strokes or fumes or something in our old Fendt tractor but I came up with this idea that I wanted to start sharing these stories,” noted Duban. Her podcast now has over 150 published episodes, and has more that 500,000 downloads.

In December 2021, Karri’s husband, Trefor, was trying to find something to get her for Christmas. This was not because he procrastinated his Christmas shopping but because a few weeks before the holiday Karri had decided that she was not quite ready to own a spinning wheel which was the gift she had originally asked for. Duban told the story, saying that was when she received an interesting email. The email was Trefor inviting Duban to come out to their farm as a Christmas gift for his wife. Duban agreed, even jumping on a Zoom call Christmas morning to surprise Karri and begin planning her trip from southern Alberta to Luskville.

Originally the plan was just to have Duban there to visit, but Karri explained that they decided to host an event so more people could profit, she added “it felt like kind of a waste to just bring her here so we can hang out.”

The event was largely designed as a networking event for women of the area to meet, share their stories and begin to build relationships. Karri noted that because the nature of farming is to work within your own space, she hopes that this event will help local women in agriculture to build closer connections so they can work together more closely and nurture the community.

“So it’s been a lot of conversation and reflection and good food and getting to know one another and sharing with women from throughout the region who are involved in agriculture,” said Karri.

The food was catered by Sheila McCrindle at Demeter Catering who explicitly sought out local women in agriculture to supply her produce for the weekend. Local farmers and artisans were on-site Saturday for a small market, one of whom was Karri and Trefor’s 10 year old daughter Naomi who was selling handmade greeting cards. Naomi told THE EQUITY, “I only drew one today and it sold very easily.”

Visitors were also invited for Leystone’s first ever honey harvest and were given the opportunity to meet the bees. According to Mike Smith, co-owner of Apiverte honey farm, the colonies at Leystone produced about 160kg of honey.

The weekend was capped off with Karri interviewing Duban. Duban spoke about the importance of women in agriculture taking the time to nurture themselves before they are able to nurture others in their communities.

When asked what she hopes the group will take away from the weekend, Duban talked to the group saying “this is cheesy, it’s probably stitched on a pillow somewhere. Find out who you authentically are, and do it on purpose. And you know, if that ruffles feathers, if that changes relationships, I think that’s okay.”

Karri hopes that her event is just the beginning and that it sparked connections between the women. She talked to the group before the interview saying, “I hope we can continue the conversations once we go home today.”

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